16th century

Although a crow's cry is considered an ill omen in China and Japan, crows became a standard theme among Japanese artists from the 16th century onward. They may have been inspired by imported Chinese paintings of pa-pa birds (related to the mynah), but instead depicted more readily observable crows. In screen painting, a popular device was to pair a scene of raucous crows with a conversely quiet image of an egrets--the contrast heightened by the birds' coloration. Artists of the Hasegawa school, championed by the artist Hasegawa To_haku (1539-1610), specialized in the impressionistic handling of ink brushwork seen here in the sketchily rendered branches and pine boughs.